It's Time
by PhoenixWormwood137
Summary: The Doctor isn't ready for Lake Silencio. But as he runs away from death, he meets someone who is slipping toward it. Someone who will turn him around again.


He doesn't mean to. He's only here to investigate, honestly, he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Because hospitals give him the chills up and down his back, shivers pricking over his arms. They're the places where cleaners scrub away at the tears and the terrible squalor of the lowest points in human life.

And he's leaving, he really is leaving, just as soon as he can.

He pops into a room - because this has got to be the source, the place the psychic disturbances are coming from. This, or a spaceship directly opposite the planet and fifty years forward. Somewhere. This continent or the next.

He tries not to look at the patients, hooked up to their life supports, hanging onto heartbeats, so saveable, so easily saveable.

He's making his way over to the cheap, out-of-style blinds, the ones he's planning to peek through, staring right ahead, at that glorious gap in the curtains where he can see the rain and the green, lush heather outside the white-scrubbed room. But looking straight ahead has its disadvantages, and he hits his knee on a chair. Hard. It smarts and his eyes flick down, around, and it's even worse than he thought it would be. He knew there would be people, people he'd want to, need to save, but this is cruel, a cruel trick of the universe. A coincidence, for fun.

Not funny.

He puts saving the world on his mental "to do" list, but he's already half-forgotten about the trail of clues he had been following, and as he ignores it, ignores it all, it fades into black and white. Total background.

It says right on the clip board at the end of the old man's bed that he wants a psychiatrist. It's no stretch to pull out the psychic paper and lean back in a chair. Tell me about your problems. Anything bothering you? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. No, believe me, I mean it. I really do. Mr Mott - oh, please don't.

The younger-looking man stares out of the window again. It's so beautiful in the pouring rain out there. Take me away, he thinks, make it so this never happened. Because what did I do to deserve it? Don't answer that. What did Wilfed Mott do to deserve it? This?

Why does anyone age?

Why do they all crumble like cookies in milk?

.

And he can't tell him, not now, and he can't even comfort him, because it would be the killer patting the victim's friend on the head and giving out sympathies.

(Because that's what it feels like, when the bowtied ancient in a boy's body looks through the human's eyes. That human, the man who is so tired and so guilty, and yet has no idea what guilt is).

And for the first time in so, so long there are tears in the Time Lord's eyes (even though he doesn't spill them) and he feels all the tiredness Wilfred does and more.

Wilf continues by telling him what a great man the Doctor was. How he did love him like a son, how he wished he had been there like a father should have been.

And the young man sitting in the scratchy, flimsy hospital chair shifts his skinny body and offers a vague apology, because he isn't good at this and he never comforts people. It's all "Shut up, you're dying" and it's never "I'm so sorry" anymore.

And Wilf goes on with how the Doctor would always stand up to evil, how the Doctor would never run from something he had to do, even though he knew it would end badly for him.

And the pretended psychiatrist sitting there is cut to the bone and he can't, he just can't listen to this. Leave me alone, he thinks.

"But Wilfred Mott, that man's not a hero. Not like you. Because don't you see, you were the one who fought in wars and you were the one who _was_ there like a father, to brilliant brilliant brilliant Donna Noble who is so much more important than the Doctor."

And Wilfred is so confused for a second, and then his disintegrating memory pulls up the time that the before-Doctor talked about changing. About changing his face.

"I'm sorry," Eleven chokes out, Eleven, who can't cry anymore and who hates himself and who is getting up to leave. Goodbye Wilfred Mott. I'm sorry. Because it's all he can say to make the old man believe that he's the same Doctor, deep down, and it's all he can say to express what he's feeling. But this keeps going after "sorry" and hits the "how can you ever forgive me" mark, and goes on through that.

But how can he claim to be the same Doctor, when he is running, running from everything, and when he's delaying something he has to do, because he knows it will end badly for him?

He's almost out the door when Wilfred calls him back, and he freezes. It's a summons he can't ignore, because that human being means so much to him. And because that human being is falling apart at the edges and soon the centre will crumble, and everything has its time and everything dies.

And so he turns around. And the Doctor who can't cry breaks a little inside. More than a little. Because his body can't fall apart, but really, his soul has done more than enough for him.

It's the happy ending of one life. In the last few hours, one can't talk and the other doesn't want to, but they forgive each other anyway.

And as one life ends, the other decides it's time to go the same way.


End file.
